CHAPTER IV
HOW TREES WALK
Once we were clearing an overgrown path on the hillside, near the pond. We had cut down many briers, willows, and poplars, and at last we came to a bird cherry.
It was growing on the path itself, and it was so old and thick that it seemed as if it must have been there at least ten years. And yet I knew that only five years before the park had been cleared.
I could not understand how such a mature cherry tree could have sprung up there.
We cut it down and went on. A little farther away, in another thicket, there was another bird cherry tree like the first, only even more dense.
I examined its root, and found that it sprang from under an old linden. The linden had been smothering it with its shade, and the cherry had run under the ground for a distance of a dozen feet,[1] with a straight stem; and when it came out into the light, it had raised its head and begun to flourish.
I cut it up by the root, and was amazed to see how light-colored and rotten the root was. After I had cut it off, the peasants and I tried to pull up the tree; but in spite of all our best efforts we could not stir it; it seemed to be fastened to the ground.
I said:—
"Look and see if we have not failed to cut it entirely off."
One of the workmen crawled down under it, and cried:—
"Yes, there's another root; there it is under the path."
I went to him, and found that this was the case.
The cherry tree, in order not to be choked off by the linden, had crept from under the linden to the path, seven feet from its original root. Then the root which
- ↑ Five arshin, 11.65 feet.
